The Burgess Shale
Watercolour and crayon
©2016 Charlene Brown
The Burgess Shale was
discovered by paleontologist Charles Walcott in 1909 high on a ridge above
Emerald Lake in Yoho Naitonal Park. He
was so impressed with the extent and diversity of the layers of fossils, that
he returned over a dozen times, finding more life forms every time. Over the
years since Walcott’s discovery, the Geologic Survey of Canada and the Royal
Ontario Museum got involved and many additional outcrops have been found,
stratigraphically both higher and lower than the original. These localities
continue to yield new organisms faster than they can be studied.
The Shale has
attracted the interest of paleoclimatologists who are studying fossil records that
appear to show a rapid acceleration in the diversification of complex organisms
during the Cambrian Explosion. This evolutionary
event was a short period half a billion years ago, during which most major
phyla in existence today appeared. When researchers
understand the climate of that period and its effects, they may be able to predict
long-term future effects of climate change on species diversification and extinction.
